Artificial Intelligence and Religious Translation: Prospects and Pitfalls

Authors

  • Khalida Hamd. Tisgam University of Baghdad / College of Education for Girls Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25130/jfa.conf.10.1.25

Keywords:

Artificial Intelligence (AI), fidelity, religious translation

Abstract

The rapid Advances in digital and technological revolution has led to the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (hereafter AI) as an effective tool to disseminate knowledge at all levels, more specifically the religious. However, there are concerns about this tool as it can be challenging or promising in religious translation. Based on Reed’s (2021) proposition that there is an interconnectedness between AI and religion, this paper contributes to the existing literature on these two domains.  It aims to examine the differences between AI and human translation, focusing on the prospects and pitfalls of the former. To achieve this goal, five Hadiths from the Arabic version of Riyad-us-Saliheen have been selected as the data of this paper. They have been already translated by Muhammad Amin and Abu Usamah Al-Arabi bin Razduq. The findings revealed that despite the promising performance of AI, there are still concerns related to translation ineligibility and infidelity.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

An-Nawawi, Imam Abu Zakariya. (2012). Riyad-us-Saliheen. (tr.) Dr. Muhammad Amin and Abu Usamah Al-Arabi bin Razduq. K.S.A: Dar-us-Salam Publications

Baker, M. (2011). In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. London: Routledge.

Berner, S. (2003). Lost in Translation: Cross-Lingual Communication, and Virtual Academic Communities. Proceedings of 5th Annual Conference on World Wide Web Applications, Durban, South Africa.

DeCanio, S.J. (2016). Robots and Humans – Complements or Substitutes? Macroecon, pp. 280-291.

Gearon, L. and Kuusisto, A. (eds.) (2025). The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gill, R. and Singh, J., (2025). A study of neuromarketing techniques for proposing cost effective information driven framework for decision making. Mater. Today Proc., 49, 2969 – 2981.

Gottfredson, L. S. 1997. Mainstream science on intelligence: an editorial with 52 signatories, history, and bibliography. Intelligence 24:13–23

House, J. (2001). ‘Translation Quality Assessment: Linguistic Description versus Social Evaluation’. Meta, 46(2), 243. doi:10.7202/003141ar

Hutchins, J. (2001). Machine translation and human translation: in competition or complementation? International Journal of Translation. 13, 1-2 Jan-Dec, pp. 5-22.

McCarthy, J. (1988). Mathematical logic in artificial intelligence. Dædalus, 117 (1): 297-311

Nilsson, N. J. 2009. The Quest for Artificial Intelligence: A History of Ideas and Achievements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Piaget, J. 1960. The Psychology of Intelligence. Paterson, New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams & Co.

Reed, R. (2021). A.I. in Religion, A.I. for Religion, A.I. and Religion: Towards a Theory of Religious Studies and Artificial Intelligence. Religions 12: 401.

Sun, S., Liu, K., & Moratto, R. (2025). Introduction: Navigating the Paradigm Shift–Translation Studies in the Age of AI. In S. Sun, K. Liu, & R. Moratto (Eds.), Translation Studies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (pp. 1-17). (Routledge Studies in Translation Technology and Techno-Humanities). Taylor and Francis Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003482369-1

Tisgam, K. H. (2025). In the Shade of Ideology: Manipulation in Two Arabic Translations of Jostein Gaarder’s Novel, Sophie’s World. International Journal of Arabic-English Studies, 25(2), 511–526. https://doi.org/10.33806/ijaes.v25i2.852

Vargas, S., Vargas, C., Ramírez, P., and Ramírez, L. 2011. The Translator's Workstations revisited: A new paradigm of translators, technology and translation.

Waddington, C. (2001). Different Methods of Evaluating Student Translations: The Question of Validity. Meta, 46(2), p. 311.

Wang, P.; Liu, K.; and Dougherty, Q. 2018. Conceptions of Artificial Intelligence and Singularity. Information 9(4). 79

Downloads

Published

2026-02-14

How to Cite

Artificial Intelligence and Religious Translation: Prospects and Pitfalls. (2026). Journal of Al-Farahidi’s Arts, 10(1), 487-498. https://doi.org/10.25130/jfa.conf.10.1.25